Projekt

The first project, "Ethica in Print. Textual Strategies for Moral Communication in Early Modern Europe" stems from the interest in the bibliographical make-up of the Ethica section. Originally preliminary in character, it has developed into an interest in books as material artefacts with their own mediality, making book history an integral part of the main project. The sub-project reacts to this renewed interest by examining how the claim to offer moral instruction influenced early modern printers' communication and marketing strategies, and by developing and integrating information on the paratextual materials in the section. The second project, "Virtue and Sociability. Early Modern Moral Culture in the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (1617-1680) and the Tugendliche Gesellschaft (1619-1652)", originates in the question how different institutional settings and contexts helped to shape the Ethica section. It reflects the shift from a philosophical discussion to an of the key concept of virtue to the exploration of these settings, viewing the section as an interdiscursive phenomenon in which different discourses and practices intersect, overlap, and interlace. The project concentrates on the two most influential male and female societies in the seventeenth-century Holy Roman Empire, inquiring into the connections between language, sociability, and virtue, and the 'gendered' versions of male and female virtue, and help decisively to grasp the section's 'wide' understanding of ethics.

• Dr. Matthias Roick

  Universität Göttingen
  Theologische Fakultät
  Kirchengeschichte
  Göttingen